Hugo L. Braune's "Dietrich von Bern" ("Theodoric the Great")

In the 19th century, printed graphic works were often no longer added to the text as a decorative element only, or to illustrate the text with the depictions of the crucial scenes of the story told, but they became autonomous. The text lost its importance, the pictures told the story with their own means. It is then that, more and more graphic cycles were published which don't have a textbook to begin with.

One of these picture-stories is Hugo L. Braunes narration of the old German saga of "Dietrich von Bern" (for the story, please check out Wikipedia and the re-telling of legend by Donald A. Mackenzie) that was published in the magazine "Teuerdank" (Berlin, Düsseldorf, Fischer & Franke, 1901-03). Hugo L. Braune (1875-?), most popular for his illustrative works on fairy tales, sagas and the operas of Richard Wagner, tells the legend of Dietrich von Bern in twelve black and white drawings that recount the adventures of Dietrich at the wonderful rose garden, the fight with the giant, etc., up to his end, riding on the black steed through the sky until he is saved by the will of god.

Collector Cards: the saga of Gudrun and Ackermanns Schlüsselgarn

In Germany, collector cards were quite popular in the late 19th and early 20th century. Liebig, Stollwerck, Reemtsma and many other companies issued their goods together with collectible cards hoping to generate a collector's passion and thusly increase their sales.
Later on they even started to sell albums in order to help the enthusiastic collectors to store the precious cards for later pleasure. Although Liebig never attempted to issue cards of great artistic value, companies like Stollwerck actually strifed for a modern and qualitative art that represented their future oriented company policy. Same goes for the collector cards of "Ackermanns Schlüsselgarn", a company specialised on sewing cotton .

In the first decade of the 20th century they issued a series of cards telling the German saga of Gudrun, depicted in twelve Art-Nouveau-images by Fritz Schoen, a Berlin illustrater born in 1871.
Gudrun, a Middle High German epic, tells the tragic romance of Herwig, king of Seeland, and Gudrun, the daughter of Hettel and Hilde. Gudrun is carried off by Hartmuth, king of Normandy, and her kinsfolk are defeated in a great battle on the island of Wulpensand off the Dutch coast. Gudrun, now prisoner in the Norman castle, refuses to become the wife of her captor, and is condemned to do the most menial work of the household. Thirteen years later, Herwig and her brother Ortwin find her washing clothes by the sea; on the following day they attack and besiege the Norman castle with their army and, finally, Herwig marries Gudrun.

Karl Mühlmeister

Karl Mühlmeister was certainly one of the most productive and talented illustrators of children's literature in Germany in the early 20th century. There are designs and watercolours to fairy tales, sagas, and adventure stories such as The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper, or other children's literature like Johanna Spyri's Heidi.
About the artist himself is unfortunately very little known. He was born in Hamburg in 1876, lived and worked in Munich until around 1942 and was a member of the "Süddeutsche Illustratorenbund". Where he studied and who his teachers were, is as unknown as the date of his death. What remains is his work, and especially his watercolours are of an intriguing delicate beauty. I am rather convinced that there might have been an influence by the work of Willy Pogány (1882-1955) whose watercolours show a similar concept of landscape and understanding for colours.
Mühlmeister's luminously coloured landscapes conjure up the atmosphere of the whole picture, they are "Stimmungslandschaften" in which the protagonists act, the stories take place. Even though, the depicted persons are often rather small in contrast to their surroundings, they are not for accessory purpose only (as known from the landscape painting tradition) but are as important as the landscape itself: they form a unified whole that gives insight into the magical-fictive world of the illustrated story.

Fairy Tales: Mohr, Herbert and Lotte: Von Prinzessinnen und Königsöhnen. Leipzig: Feuer, ca. 1920.





Arabian Nights: Die schönsten Märchen aus 1001 Nacht. Stuttgart: Thienemann, ca. 1925.





The Leatherstocking Tales: Cooper, James Fenimore: Der Lederstrumpf. Reutlingen: Enßlin & Laiblin, ca. 1920.



Grimms' Fairy Tales: Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm: Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Reutlingen: Enßlin & Laiblin, 1927.

Book Art: designing end papers

At the turn of the 20th century artists tried to reform the making of books. Books shouldn't only be printed on good paper, with the right type and illustrations fitting to the text, but also with an according book cover and beautiful end papers. This over all development in the book arts is mostly attributed to the Art Nouveau, but, on closer look, interest in the book as a "Gesamtkunstwerk" started much earlier and is to be found for example in the editions de luxe that were published in the "epoch" of Historism.
True is, that the specific design of end papers increased during the Art Nouveau, but even then it was not a common feature. Through my researches on illustrated fairy tales and sagas, that are often categorized as children's literature (which is only half true), end papers were rarely designed at all. Nonetheless there are a few examples of not only decoratively patterned endpapers but such that are illustrated with motifs that fit to the contents of the book.
Intent and approach differ from end paper to end paper and range from a rather decorative, to motifs that create a certain atmosphere according to the text, or belong to the telling of the story.

In 1921, Maximilian Liebenwein designed the end paper for an edition of Gottfried Kellers Spiegel, das Kätzchen (Zürich / Leipzig / Wien: Amalthea, 1921), the story of a cat with a repeating pattern of cats moving over rose garlands. The topic of the book is thus mirrored and transformed into a decorative pattern.



The same can be said for Gertrud Caspari's fairy tale figurines (Mein Märchen-Bilderbuch von Gertrud Caspari. Leipzig: Alfred Hahn, [1921]): showing central standard characters of the fairy tales the book contains, such as the king and queen and the old witch.



On the contrary, Willy Planck (it's not completely sure, that he designed the end paper, sometimes different artists were commissioned to do this, especially when the end papers were needed for later editions) designed a dark wood:



The books title Ins Zauberland (Into Wonderland, Sttutgart: Loewe, 1913) alludes to the content of the book: fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, including Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood and other fairy tales in which the forest - dark, mysterious, dangerous - plays a significant role. By picturing an equally dark, mysterious and dangerous wood, the end paper creates a certain atmosphere that introduces the reader to the fairy wood.
This can be compared to the end paper of Wilhelm Roegge, designed for a collection of German folk and hero tales (Deutsche Volks- und Heldensagen. Stuttgart: Levy & Müller, ca. 1910), such as Barbarossa and Roland. The end paper depicts a medieval landscape: mountains, castles, and a river zig-zagging through the country. Rhine-Romantic is activated here, putting the reader into the right mind for the saga-material.



Anne Anderson's end paper (Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten und andere Märchen von Brüder Grimm. Leipzig: A. Anton & Co., [1930].) takes the possibilities of the end paper even further: she shows a fairy tale scene, that - though it has nothing to do with the Grimm fairy tales, but illustrates the story of the magical horse from the Arabian Nights - indicates clearly that the book contains a collection of fairy tales.



Walter Crane's Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves from 1904 actually shows a scene from the fairy tale contained in the book: or two, to be more precise, the opening of the secret hide-out of the thieves and a long caravan transporting treasures through the desert.



Ruth and Martin Koser-Michaels end paper (Zwei Märchen der Brüder Grimm. Nürnberg: Seebaldus, 1948) do the same: the narrative of the illustrations is continued - or even commenced - in the end papers. Here, the boy from the The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was sets out for his search. To his left, there is the gallows where he stayed overnight, and at the end of the road, there is the haunted castle with the giant ghost with the white hair waiting and watching.

Considered the many possibilities the end papers presented the artists with, it is a shame, that end papers were (and still are) only rarely illustrated or specially designed.

Mac Harshberger, Tristan and Iseult, 1927

1927 erschien bei Albert & Charles Boni in New York Joseph Bédiers Fassung der Tristan-Sage mit Illustrationen von Mac Harsheberger.

Der in Tacoma, Washington, geborene Künstler ging 1921 nach Paris und studierte dort zusammen mit Maurice Denis. In den 1920er Jahren arbeitete er in New York City und lehrte viele Jahre am Pratt Institute. Seine Illustrationskunst wird in der Regel dem Art Déco zugerechnet, was sich aber an seinen schwarzweißen Illustrationen zu Tristan and Iseult eher weniger festmachen lässt. Hier zeigt sich eher die Auseinandersetzung mit Aubrey Beardsley, der ja seinerseits Malory's Morte D'Arthur illustriert hatte. Wie Beardsley arbeitet Harshberger mit der Kontrastierung schwarzer und weißer Flächen. Harshbergers Illustrationen sind aber dennoch ganz anders, klarer in der Linie, graphischer in der allgemeinen Komposition. Sie gehören meiner Meinung nach mit zu den ästhetisch ansprechendsten Illustrationen zur Tristan-Sage.

Hier ein paar Beispiele (oben Isolde an der Leiche Tristans):



König Marke beobachtet Tristan und Isolde schlafend


Als Mönch verkleidet trägt Tristan Isolde ans Ufer.